WHEELING SUSPENSION BRIDGE
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| In 1816, with a strong interest in internal improvements, the legislatures of Virginia and Ohio authorized the formation of the Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Company (Belmont because the bridge company was to connect from Wheeling, West Virginia to Belmont County in Ohio). With the coming of the National Road to Wheeling, it was necessary to bridge the Ohio. Although the road reached Wheeling in 1818, it wasn’t until 1847 that the construction of a bridge was commissioned. In sharp competition with John Roebling, later noted for the famous Brooklyn Bridge, the company granted the contract to Charles Ellet Jr. The span of the bridge is 1010 feet, measured from the center of the two supporting towers – the longest clear-span bridge in the world at the time. All materials for the bridge, including the drawn iron wire used to create the cables, were produced locally. The main cables rest upon iron rollers at the summits of each tower. The rollers relieve the strain on the cables caused by expansion and contraction with changes in temperature. In 1854, high winds set up an oscillation in the deck structure that resulted in severe damage to the bridge. Under the supervision of Ellet, reconstruction work began almost immediately and the bridge was reopened in just three months. In 1867, the Citizen Railway Company was granted permission to lay tracks on the bridge to accommodate horse-drawn streetcars, a possibility indicated earlier by Ellet. In 1872, Washington Roebling, son of John Roebling, was commissioned to provide upgrades to the bridge which included the installation of the diagonal cable stays. The bridge remained essentially unchanged until 1956 when a new steel deck system was installed. The most recent work on the bridge was completed in 1999 with repairs to the stiffening truss and wire rope stays, complete inspection and rewrapping of the cables, and the installation of new illumination. Today, the bridge stands as one of the finest examples of pre-Civil War engineering and is considered as one of the world’s most significant and historic bridges. THE HISTORIC NATIONAL ROAD IN WEST VIRGINIA Source of historical
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| Throughout his career, Charles Ellet produced numerous “reports” that proposed the construction of suspension bridges. It was during the 1830’s that he became interested in the possibility of bridging the Ohio. In 1836, while he was in Lynchburg, Virginia, having never visited Wheeling, Ellet created his first design for a suspension bridge at Wheeling. It consisted of a 500 foot center span flanked by two 100 foot side arch spans.
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Charles Ellet, Jr. |
| Charles Ellet, Jr. [1810-1862] was born in 1810 in Bucks County near Philadelphia. The young Ellet had little interest in farming and in 1827 left home to join a survey of the Susquehanna River. In 1828, he gained employment on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and rose to the position of assistant engineer by 1829. The following year Ellet resigned and moved to France to study. Returning to the U.S. in 1832, Ellet became a leading proponent of wire suspension bridge construction. In 1841, he won the contract to build the Fairmount Bridge across the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia. This placed Ellet in the forefront of wire suspension bridge construction in America, a position further enhanced with the building of the Wheeling Suspension Bridge. |
Ohio Steamboats and the Bridge |
| On November 10th, 1849, just five days before the official opening of the bridge, the water level at the bridge rose almost 20 feet. The steamboat, Messenger, on its way upstream to Pittsburgh, had to cut almost 8 feet from her smoke stacks to pass under the bridge. The following day, the Hibernia #2 was likewise impaired but waited for the water level to drop before continuing upstream. Armed with these and similar events, the State of Pennsylvania, on behalf of the city of Pittsburgh, filed a case in federal court to either have the bridge removed or elevated, the argument being that it was an obstruction to river traffic. In May of 1852, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of Pennsylvania. The bridge either had to be elevated or removed by February 1, 1853. The battle for the bridge moved to Congress. The Bridge Company successfully lobbied the House Committee on Post Office and Post Roads to have the bridge designated as a post and military road. By the end of August 1852, the House passed legislation legalizing the bridge and thus fixing its height and location. Finally, in 1856, after another legal challenge to the bridge by Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court recognized the Congressional action and ruled in favor of the bridge. Of course, by this time the height of the bridge was largely irrelevant since most steamboats had hinged stacks that could be lowered to pass under bridges.
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